“You will never do so,” the being said. “You will be torn in pieces all over again.”

  “That’s what you think. I think otherwise. But whichever is right—and I bet this is too big a universe for either of us to predict—we’ll have made a free choice on Earth. I’d rather be dead than domesticated.

  “The people are going to learn about you as soon as Judge Brodsky’s been reinstated. No, sooner. The regiment will hear today, the city tomorrow, just to make sure no one gets ideas about suppressing the truth again. By the time your next spaceship comes, we’ll be ready for it: in our own way, whatever that is.”

  The being drew a fold of robe about its head. Speyer turned to Mackenzie. His face was wet. “Anything…you want to say…Jimbo?”

  “No,” Mackenzie mumbled. “Can’t think of anything. Let’s get our command organized here. I don’t expect we’ll have to fight any more, though. It seems to be about ended down there.”

  “Sure.” Speyer drew an uneven breath. “The enemy troops elsewhere are bound to capitulate. They’ve got nothing left to fight for. We can start patching up pretty soon.”

  There was a house with a patio whose wall was covered by roses. The street outside had not yet come back to life, so that silence dwelt here under the yellow sunset. A maidservant showed Mackenzie through the back door and departed. He walked toward Laura, who sat on a bench beneath a willow. She watched him approach but did not rise. One hand rested on a cradle.

  He stopped and knew not what to say. How thin she was!

  Presently she told him, so low he could scarcely hear: “Tom’s dead.”

  “Oh, no.” Darkness came and went before his eyes.

  “I learned the day before yesterday, when a few of his men struggled home. He was killed in the San Bruno.”

  Mackenzie did not dare join her, but his legs would not upbear him. He sat down on the flagstones and saw curious patterns in their arrangement. There was nothing else to look at.

  Her voice ran on above him, toneless: “Was it worth it? Not only Tom, but so many others, killed for a point of politics?”

  “More than that was at stake,” he said.

  “Yes, I heard on the radio. I still can’t understand how it was worth it. I’ve tried very hard, but I can’t.”

  He had no strength left to defend himself. “Maybe you’re right, duck. I wouldn’t know.”

  “I’m not sorry for myself,” she said. “I still have Jimmy. But Tom was cheated out of so much.”

  He realized all at once that there was a baby, and he ought to take his grandchild to him and think thoughts about life going on into the future. But he was too empty.

  “Tom wanted him named after you,” she said.

  Did you, Laura? he wondered. Aloud: “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’ll find something.”

  He made himself glance at her. The sunset burned on the willow leaves above and on her face, which was now turned toward the infant he could not see. “Come back to Nakamura,” he said.

  “No. Anywhere else.”

  “You always loved the mountains,” he groped. “We—”

  “No.” She met his eyes. “It isn’t you, Dad. Never you. But Jimmy is not going to grow up a soldier.” She hesitated. “I’m sure some of the Espers will keep going, on a new basis, but with the same goals. I think we should join them. He ought to believe in something different from what killed his father, and work for it to become real. Don’t you agree?”

  Mackenzie climbed to his feet against Earth’s hard pull. “I don’t know,” he said. “Never was a thinker…Can I see him?”

  “Oh, Dad—”

  He went over and looked down at the small sleeping form. “If you marry again,” he said, “and have a daughter, would you call her for her mother?” He saw Laura’s head bend downward and her hands clench. Quickly he said, “I’ll go now. I’d like to visit you some more, tomorrow or sometime, if you’ll have me.”

  Then she came to his arms and wept. He stroked her hair and murmured, as he had done when she was a child. “You do want to return to the mountains, don’t you? They’re your country too, your people, where you belong.”

  “Y-you’ll never know how much I want to.”

  “Then why not?” he cried.

  His daughter straightened herself. “I can’t,” she said. “Your war is ended. Mine has just begun.”

  Because he had trained that will, he could only say, “I hope you win it.”

  “Perhaps in a thousand years—” She could not continue.

  Night had fallen when he left her. Power was still out in the city, so the street lamps were dark and the stars stood forth above all roofs. The squad that waited to accompany their colonel to barracks looked wolfish by lantern light. They saluted him and rode at his back, rifles ready for trouble; but there was only the iron sound of horseshoes.

  UNTITLED LIMERICK

  A foolish young chemist named Kroll

  heated fulminate up in a bowl.

  Without distillation

  he got separation,

  i.e., of his body and soul.

  OPERATION SALAMANDER

  The sky was full of broomsticks and the police were going nuts trying to handle the traffic. The Homecoming game always attracts an overflow crowd, also an overflow of high spirits. These I did not share. I edged my battered prewar Chevy past a huge 200-dragonpower Lincoln with sky-blue handle, polyethylene straw, and blatting radio. It sneered at me, but I got to the vacant rack first. Dismounting, I pocketed the runekey and mooched glumly through the mob.

  The Weather Bureau kachinas are obliging about game nights. There was a cool crisp tang to the air, and dry leaves scrittled across the sidewalks. A harvest moon was rising like a big yellow pumpkin over darkened campus buildings. I thought of Midwestern fields and woods, damp earthy smells and streaming mists, out beyond the city, and the wolf part of me wanted to be off and away after jackrabbits. But with proper training a were can control his reflexes, and polarized light doesn’t have to cause more than a primitive tingle along his nerves.

  For me, the impulse was soon lost in bleaker thoughts. Ginny, my darling! She should have been walking beside me, face lifted to the wind and long hair crackling in the thin frost; but the only consolation was an illegal hip-flask. Why the hell was I attending the game anyhow?

  Passing Teth Caph Sameth frat house, I found myself on the campus proper. Trismegistus was founded after the advent of modern science, and its layout reflects that fact. The largest edifice houses the Language Department, because exotic tongues are necessary for the more powerful spells—which is why so many African and Asian students come here to learn American slang; but there are two English halls, one for the arts college and one for Engineering Poetics. Nearby is the Therianthropology Building, which always has interesting displays of foreign technique: this month it was Eskimo, in honor of the visiting agekok, Dr. Ayingalak. A ways off is Zoology, carefully isolated inside its pentagonal fence, for some of those long-legged beasties are not pleasant neighbors. The medical school has a shiny new research center, courtesy of the Rockefeller Foundation, from which has already come such stunning advances as the polaroid filter-lenses that make it possible for those afflicted with the Evil Eye to lead normal lives.

  Only the law school is unaffected. Their work has always been of the other world.

  Crossing the Mall, I went by the grimy little Physical Sciences Building just in time for Dr. Griswold to hail me. He came puttering down the steps, a small wizened fellow with goatee and merry blue eyes. Somewhere behind their twinkle lay a look of hurt bafflement, as of a child who could never quite understand why no one else was really interested in his toys.

  “Ah, Mr. Matuchek,” he said. “Are you attending the game?”

  I nodded, not especially wanting company, but he tagged along and I had to be sociable. Not that I was apple-polishing—I was in his chemistry and physics classes, but they were snaps. I simply didn’t have the heart to rebuff a nice, lonely old geezer.

  “Me too,” he went on. “I understand the cheerleaders have planned something spectacular between halves.”

  “Yeh?”

  He cocked his head and gave me a birdlike glance. “If you’re having any difficulty, Mr. Matuchek…if I can help you…it’s what I’m here for, you know.”

  “It’s OK,” I lied. “Thanks anyway, sir.’

  “It can’t be easy for a mature man, a combat veteran and a famous actor, to start in with a lot of giggling freshmen,” he said. “I remember how you helped me in that…ah…unfortunate incident last month. Believe me, Mr. Matuchek, I am grateful.”

  “Oh, hell, that was nothing. I came here to get an education.” And to be with Virginia Graylock—but that’s impossible now.

  I saw no reason to load the details on him. It was simple enough. After we beat the kaftans off the Caliphate, I returned to Metro-Goldwyn-Merlin and resumed werewolfing for them. But the same exploit which introduced me to Ginny had left me bobtailed, and a brush piece is a nuisance. I had medals, sure, but war heroes were a dime a coven—not that I claim an undue share of courage, events had merely flogged me into doing what I did. I couldn’t get real conviction into my role in Abbott and Costello Meet Paracelsus; I don’t look down on pure entertainment, but I discovered a new-born wish to do something more significant.

  Ginny could get me into the Arcane Agency of which she was head witch, and I could work on that control of paranatural forces on which the whole world now depends. To be precise, I shared the common dream of taming Fire and Air enough to hitch them to a ship and reach the planets. But first I needed professional training. So Stephen Matuchek and MGM parted company with noises of mutual esteem, and I went to college on my savings and my G.I.

  Ginny herself wanted a Ph.D.—she already had an M.A. from Congo—and Trismegistus offered her an instructorship while she took an extended leave of absence from the agency. Same school…we’d be together all our free hours, and I could probably talk her into an early marriage. Wonderful setup.

  Like hell.

  Griswold sighed, perhaps understanding my withdrawal. “There are times when I feel altogether useless,” he said.

  “Not in the least, sir,” I answered with careful heartiness. “How on Middle Earth would—oh, say alchemy—be practical without a grounding in chemistry and nuclear physics? You’d produce poisonous compounds, or blow up half a county.”

  “Of course, of course. You understand. You know something of the world—more than I, in all truth. But the students…well, I suppose it’s only natural. They want to speak a few words, make a few passes, and get what they desire, just like that, without bothering to learn the Sanskrit grammar or the periodic table. They haven’t realized that you never get something for nothing.”

  “They will. They’ll grow up.”

  “Even the administration…this University simply doesn’t appreciate the need for physical science. Now at California, they’re getting a billion-volt Philosopher’s Stone, but here—” Griswold shrugged. “Excuse me. I despise self-pity.”

  We came to the stadium, and I handed over my ticket but declined the night-seeing spectacles. They’d given me witch-sight in basic training. My seat was on the thirty-yard line, between a fresh-faced coed and an Old Grad already hollering himself raw. An animated tray went by, and I bought a hot dog and rented a crystal ball. But that wasn’t to follow the details of play. I muttered over the globe and peered into it and saw Ginny.

  She was seated on the fifty, opposite side, the black cat Svartalf on her lap, her hair a shout of red against the human drabness around. That witchcraft peculiarly hers was something more old and strong than the Art in which she was so adept. Even across the field and through the cheap glass gazer, she made my heart stumble.

  The problem was simply this: Trismegistus’ President Malzius was a pompous mediocrity whose chief accomplishment had been to make the trustees his yes-men. What he said, went. And it was his arrogant idea to insist that all personnel take a geas to obey every University regulation while their contracts were in force. He had still corralled a pretty good faculty for the salaries were good and the rules the ordinary ones. Ginny had signed her contract a month before I enrolled and not felt the kicker till too late.

  Students and faculty members, right down to the instructor level, were not permitted to date each other.

  Naturally I had stormed my way into Malzius’ office and demanded an exception. No use. He wasn’t going to revise the book for me—“bad precedent, Mr. Matuchek, bad precedent”—and I agreed sulkily that it was, indeed, a bad precedent. The rule would have had to be stricken completely, as the geas didn’t allow special dispensations. Nor did it allow for the case of a student from another school, so it was pointless for me to transfer. The only solution, till Ginny’s contract expired in June, would have been for me to drop entirely, and with that cold-iron determination of hers she wouldn’t hear of that. Lose a whole year? What was I, a wolf or a mouse? We had quite a quarrel about it, right out in public. And when you can only meet at official functions, it just isn’t easy to kiss and make up.

  Oh, sure, we were still engaged and still saw each other at smokers, teas…really living it up. Meanwhile, as she pointed out with that icy logic I knew was defensive but never could break past, we were human. From time to time, she would be going out with some bachelor colleague, wishing he were me, and I’d squire an occasional girl around…

  Tonight she was with Dr. Alan Abercrombie, Assistant Professor of Comparative Nigromancy, sleek, blond, handsome, the lion of the tiffins. He’d been paying her a lot of attention while I smoldered alone.

  Quite alone. I think Svartalf considers my morals no better than his. I had every intention of fidelity, but when you’ve parked your broomstick in a moonlit lane and a cute bit of fluff is snuggled against you…those round yellow eyes glowing from a nearby tree are remarkably style-cramping. I soon gave up and spent my evenings studying or drinking beer.

  Heigh-ho. I drew my coat tighter about me and shivered in the wind. There was a smell of wrongness to the air…probably only my bad mood, I thought, but I’d sniffed trouble up in the future before now.

  The Old Grad blasted my ears off as the teams trotted out into the moonlight, Trismegistus’ Gryphons and the Albertus Magnus Wyverns. The very old grads say they can’t get used to so many four-eyed runts wearing letters—apparently a football team was composed of dinosaurs back before the Thaumaturgic Age. But of course the Art is essentially intellectual and has given its own tone to sports.

  This game had its interesting points. The Wyverns levitated off and their skinny little quarterback turned out to be a werepelican. Dushanovitch, in condor shape, nailed him on our twenty. Andrevski is the best line werebuck in the Big Ten, and held them for two downs. On the third, Pilsudski got the ball and became a kangaroo. His footwork was beautiful as he dodged a tackle—the guy had a Tarnkappe, but you could see the footprints advance—and passed to Mstislav. The Wyverns swooped low, expecting Mstislav to turn it into a raven for a field goal, but with lightning a-crackle as he fended off their counterspells, he made it into a pig…greased. These were minor transformations, naturally, a quick gesture at an object already sensitized, not the great and terrible Words I was to hear before dawn.

  A bit later, unnecessary roughness cost us fifteen yards: Domingo accidentally stepped on a scorecard which had blown to the field and drove his cleats through several of the Wyverns’ names. But no real harm was done, and they got the same penalty when Thorsson was carried away by the excitement and tossed a thunderbolt. At the end of the first half, the score was Trismegistus 13, Albertus Magnus 6, and the crowd was nearly ripping up the benches.

  I pulled my hat back off my ears, gave the Old Grad a dirty look, and stared into the crystal. Ginny was more of a fan than I; she was jumping and hollering, hardly seeming to notice that Abercrombie had draped an arm around her. Or perhaps she didn’t mind…? I took a long, resentful drag at my flask.

  The cheering squad paraded out onto the field. Their instruments wove through an elaborate aerial maneuver, drumming and tootling, as they made the traditional march to the Campus Queen. I’m told it’s also traditional that she ride forth on a unicorn to meet them, but for some reason that was omitted this year.

  The hair rose stiff on my neck and I felt the blind instinctive tug of Skinturning. Just in time I pulled myself back toward human and sat in a cold shudder. The air was suddenly rotten with danger. Couldn’t anyone else smell it?

  I focused my crystal on the cheering squad, looking for the source, only dimly aware of the yell—

  Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth, he, vau,

  Nomine Domini, bow, wow, wow!

  Melt ’em in the fire and stick ’em with pins,

  Trismegistus always wins…

  MACILWRAITH!

  “Hey…what’s wrong, mister?” The coed shrank from me, and I realized I was snarling.

  “Oh. Nothing…I hope.” With an effort I composed my face and kept it human.

  The fattish blond kid down among the rooters didn’t look harmful, but there was a sense of lightning-shot blackness about his future. I’d dealt with him before, and—

  I didn’t snitch on him at the time, but it was he who had almost broken up Griswold’s chemistry class. Premed freshman, rich boy, not a bad guy at heart but with an unfortunate combination of natural aptitude for the Art and total irresponsibility. Medical students are notorious for merry pranks such as waltzing an animated skeleton through the girls’ dorm, and he wanted to start early.